Matt Berger

As Microsoft Corp. nears a conclusion to its long-fought antitrust battle with the U.S. government, the company announced Wednesday that its top legal advisor, Bill Neukom, who played a lead role in the case, will retire from his duties at the end of the fiscal year in mid-2002.

Software vendors are taking a big bite of Apple Computer Inc.'s latest operating system, including its foe-turned-friend Microsoft Corp., which made available Monday a version of its Office software suite for Mac OS X Version 10.1.

The release of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows XP desktop operating system and all its hype has made for a tough act to follow, but it isn't slowing the software maker as it forges ahead with the release of its next big operating system, this time for servers.

A collection of security companies have formed a group to create standard policies and guidelines for how information about software security flaws is distributed and published.

Early sales of Windows XP have exceeded those of some previous Microsoft Corp. desktop operating systems, boosting PC-related industries, the company said Thursday, citing independent research figures.

Sun Microsystems is using internally software from Talaris Corp. for building and deploying Web services that it is pitching to customers.

Vulnerabilities discovered in Microsoft Corp.'s free e-mail and Passport authentication services allowed a programmer to access credit card information stored on the company's servers, forcing it to shut down the electronic wallet feature in Passport until it can fix the problem, Microsoft confirmed Friday.

Vulnerabilities discovered in Microsoft